Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Can Digital Poison Corrupt The Algorithm?

  These days, so much of what we see online is delivered by social media algorithms. The operations of these algorithms are opaque to us; commentators forever speculate as to whether they just show us what they think we want to see, or whether they try to guide our thinking and habits in a given direction. The Digital Poison device  from [Lucretia], [Auxence] and [Ramon] aims to twist and bend the algorithm to other ends.

• International Business Times ☛ Who Is Bill Moyers: Journalism Career, Cause of Death, and Legacy in US Journalism

  As White House Press Secretary from 1965 to 1967, he managed critical communications during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement.

  Known for his articulate speechwriting and strategic insight, Moyers played a pivotal role in shaping Johnson's Great Society initiatives, advocating for social reforms and anti-poverty programs.

• LBJ Presidential Library ☛ The LBJ Presidential Library, LBJ Foundation and Johnson family remember Bill Moyers - LBJ Library

  Moyers began his journalism career at age 16 as a cub reporter for his hometown daily newspaper in Marshall, Texas. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer intern and eventually promoted him to manage his personal mail. Soon after, Moyers transferred to The University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for The Daily Texan newspaper, graduating in 1956. While in Austin, Moyers served as assistant news editor for KTBC radio and television stations owned by Lady Bird Johnson, wife of Senator Johnson. During Senator Johnson's unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president, Moyers served as a top aide, and in the general campaign, he acted as liaison between vice presidential candidate Johnson and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy. Moyers was on Air Force 1 when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president following Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.

• The Nation ☛ Bill Moyers Kept the Faith in Democracy. We Need His Example More Than Ever.

  The legendary journalist believed that speaking truth to power was the essential underpinning of an embattled American experiment.

• Tom Critchlow ☛ Taking Blogging Seriously

  I’ve always been an advocate for blogging. It’s rare for a conversation with my friends to not at some point touch on blogging. It’s a running joke at this point.

  But it’s no joke. You should take blogging seriously. I am.

• Robert Birming ☛ Cherish what you have

  They were what I’d call “old modern people.” They appreciated things that were well-made, timeless, and built to last — beautiful in their own quiet way — while still taking full advantage of the convenience and possibilities of today’s technology.

• Manton Reece ☛ Anne Sturdivant

  I didn’t really know Anne, but she was very thoughtful, and I got the sense that she was one of those people who made a difference. Rest in peace.

• BoingBoing ☛ Bizarre: WH reacts to mysterious new Trump-Epstein art

  A mysterious gold "TV" has popped up across from the U.S. Capitol featuring an unusually joyful Donald Trump dancing with pedo-pal Jeffrey Epstein. But the Trump Administration fails to see any humor in the art piece — the second Trump-related sculpture to grace the National Mall in the last two weeks.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Goodbye to Brandon’s Journal

  This hits hard. Brandon blogged for as long as me, though I only discovered him more recently.

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ All The Stars, All The Time

    Some of the largest objects in the night sky to view through a telescope are galaxies and supernova remnants, often many times larger in size than the moon but generally much less bright. Even so, they take up a mere fraction of the night sky, with even the largest planets in our solar system only taking up a few arcseconds and stars appearing as point sources. There are more things to look at in the sky than there are telescopes, regardless of size, so it might almost seem like an impossible task to see everything. Yet that’s what this new telescope in Chile aims to do.

  • Wired ☛ Space Elevators Could Totally Work—if Earth Days Were Much Shorter

    Oh, you don’t know what a space elevator is? It’s a sci-fi staple, a tether from Earth up to an orbiting space station in geosynchronous orbit. A cable-climbing car would ride up and down, just like a regular elevator. Basically it’s a way of getting out to space as easily and routinely as you ride an elevator to your office in the morning—no rockets required.

    Let's start off with some basic questions and build up to some more complicated physics.

• Career/Education

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Congress unlikely to enact ‘absolutely devastating’ Trump proposal to slash Pell Grants • Michigan Advance

    The Pell Grant is a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college and is the foundation of federal student aid in the United States.

    Catherine Brown, senior policy and advocacy director at the National College Attainment Network, said the cut would be “absolutely devastating,” noting that “college is already out of reach for millions upon millions of low-income students.”

  • Apollo Magazine ☛ How should a museum bench be?

    Museum seats – like museum cafes, cloakrooms, shops and toilets – may seem of less consequence than the artworks surrounding them, but they too can make all the difference between a one-time visit and the first of many. Seating says something: it announces that there are many ways of doing this. A room without seats is saying the opposite. At their best, museum seats invite slowness. Their perfect literary tribute, Thomas Bernhard’s novel Old Masters (1985), features a man who sits at the same bench in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, for several hours every other day, staring (or not staring) at a painting he only somewhat likes: Tintoretto’s Portrait of a Man with a White Beard (c. 1570). Most of the book is not about the painting. And most museum visits are not only about the art. They’re also about getting out of the rain, finding a good Wi-Fi network, impressing your date, sleeping off a big lunch, sending a devastating tweet about teens in museums staring at their phones rather than the art – the philistines! – and museum seats are an acknowledgement of that diversity of use. (The grey, plush, high-backed seats in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, by the way, are among the best around, and the Wi-Fi is decent too).

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A 3D-Printed RC Dump Truck

    Whatever your day job, many of us would love to jump behind the controls of a dump truck for a lark. In the real world, that takes training and expertise and the opportunity is denied to many of us. However, you can live out those dreams on your desk with this 3D-printed build from [ProfessorBoots.]

  • Hackaday ☛ Standing Desk Uses Pneumatics To Do The Job

    Most standing desks on the market use electric motors or hand cranks to raise and lower the deck. However, [Matthias Wandel] found a Kloud standing desk that used an altogether different set up. He set about figuring out how it worked in the old-fashioned way—by pulling it apart.

  • University of Toronto ☛ Tape drives (and robots) versus hard disk drives, and volume

    At a conceptual level, an LTO tape system is the storage medium (the LTO tape) separated from the read/write head and the motors (the tape drive). When you compare this to hard drives, you get to build and buy the 'tape drive' portion only once, instead of including a copy in each instance of the storage medium (the tapes). In theory this should make the whole collection a lot cheaper. In practice it only does so once you have a quite large number of tapes, because the cost of tape drives (and tape robots to move tapes in and out of the drives) is really quite high (and has been for a relatively long time).

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Vox ☛ RFK Jr’s decision to cut off Gavi will kill staggering numbers of kids

    How did we do it? Primarily through vaccines, which account for about 40 percent of the global drop in infant mortality over the last 50 years, representing 150 million lives saved. Once babies get extremely sick, it’s incredibly hard to get adequate care for them anywhere in the world, but we’ve largely prevented them from getting sick in the first place. Vaccines eradicated smallpox and dramatically reduced infant deaths from measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, and tetanus. And vaccines not only make babies likelier to survive infancy but also make them healthier for the rest of their lives.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The Protestant Work Ethic, Libertarianism, and the Welfare State

    Previous experimentation with Medicaid work requirements in places like Arkansas shows that virtually all the targeted recipients are already working as hard as they are able, once we adjust for their relatively poor health. Loss of Medicaid, far from inducing greater work effort, increases unemployment by denying sick people the health care they need to restore their ability to work. Many recipients lose eligibility not because they are failing to work, but because they can’t meet the additional paperwork requirements and filing deadlines required to prove they are steadily working. Work requirements divert enormous sums from medical care into determining eligibility for recipients who are already working.

• Proprietary

  • PC World ☛ Millions of printers open to hacks due to unpatchable security flaw

    Rapid7’s investigation uncovered eight vulnerabilities in 689 Brother models, which include printers, scanners, and label printers. Meanwhile, 46 Fujifilm, 6 Konica Minolta, 5 Ricoh, and 2 Toshiba models were also affected as they use Brother components. The severity of the vulnerabilities ranges from moderate (CVSS score 5.3) to critical (CVSS score 9.8), which emphasizes the urgency of the issue.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Apple Abuses Wallet Push Notifications to Advertise Its New Movie

    This is not really an ad for Wallet. It is an ad for Fandango to promote Apple’s movie, tickets for which may be added to Wallet. This is not the only time Apple has promoted its services through push notifications and in-app banners, and it is far from the only company doing this. It is tacky — yet the only surprising thing about it is how it is possible for a multi-trillion-dollar company to still feel like a sellout.

  • Techdirt ☛ Promises The ‘Trump Phone’ Would Be ‘Made In USA’ Lasted 1/100th Of A Scaramucci

    A cornerstone of the supposed company was a new $500 Trump T1 phone. To pitch the phone, the press release had a badly photoshopped rendition of what the so-far-nonexistent phone would look like (curiously missing a camera flash), peppered with claims the phone would be “proudly designed and built in the United States.”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Register UK ☛ Anthropic chucks chump change at studies on job-killing tech

      The company, which raised another $3.5 billion in a Series E funding round in March - valuing it at $61.5 billion - will give grants of between $10,000 and $50,000, including $5,000 in Claude API credits to use its AI model, for academics to study the effect of AI on the job market. The first awards will be made in August, and you can apply for funding here.

    • Wired ☛ OpenAI’s Unreleased AGI Paper Could Complicate Microsoft Negotiations

      The clause states that if OpenAI’s board ever declares it has developed artificial general intelligence (AGI), it would limit Microsoft’s contracted access to the startup’s future technologies. Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, is now reportedly pushing for the removal of the clause and is considering walking away from the deal entirely, according to the Financial Times.

    • Daniel Miller ☛ Overview of the GenAI Landscape

      Last month ago I posted the outline of a General-audience AI Presentation I gave, but I have a bunch of AI-related links sitting around and a vague idea of how they link together, so here goes…

    • Ben Tsai ☛ Do the work

      Two of my friends have recently written about the growing angst among creators about the squeezing out of soul and humanity in our endeavors.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Pitchbook: AI venture capital resorts to mergers

      The companies are going nowhere. They can’t exit, they’re running out of money, they can’t get more funding. EIther the company just shuts down, or they merge two loser companies and hope there’s an investor next quarter.

    • The New Stack ☛ The 50-Year Story of the Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Neural Networks

      In 2016, artificial neural networks matured as a technology and did so live in front of tens of millions of people. If ANNs could be put to practical use for non-routine work, the already intolerable speed of technological change and the chaos it created in the labour market would worsen.

    • Jono Alderson ☛ Everything is now opaque - Jono Alderson

      When an AI assistant decides what to recommend based on Reddit sentiment, embedded documentation, third-party schema, or the tone of a YouTube review, your analytics stack won’t capture it. You won’t know what tipped the balance. You won’t even know you were in the running – let alone that you lost.

    • The Register UK ☛ Palantir joins tech-nuclear bandwagon with software deal

      The data analytics software provider announced a deal with The Nuclear Company (TNC) to build a so-called Nuclear Operating System (NOS) designed to provide data-driven visibility into power-plant construction.

    • India Times ☛ Palantir partners to develop AI software for nuclear construction

      Palantir and Nuclear Company will jointly create the nuclear operating system (NOS), which will simplify construction, allowing the firm to build plants faster and at lower cost.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: AI isn't just standing by. It's doing things — without guardrails

      Just two and a half years after OpenAI stunned the world with ChatGPT, AI is no longer only answering questions — it is taking actions. We are now entering the era of AI agents, in which AI large language models don’t just passively provide information in response to your queries, they actively go into the world and do things for — or potentially against — you.

    • The Register UK ☛ The network is indeed trying to become the computer

      These memory sharing networks are vital for ever-embiggening AI training and inference workloads. As their parameter counts and token throughput requirements both rise, they need ever-larger memory domains to do their work. Throw in a mixture of expert models and the need for larger, fatter and faster scale-up networks, as they are now called, is obvious even to an AI model with only 7 billion parameters.

    • The Verge ☛ Graphic artists in China push back on AI and its averaging effect | The Verge

      Chinese graphic artists are rapidly experiencing the impact of image generators on their day-to-day work: the technology enables copycats and profoundly shifts clients’ perception of their work, specifically in terms of how much that work costs and how much time it takes to produce. Freelance artists or designers working in industries with clients that invest in stylized, eye-catching graphics, like advertising, are particularly at risk.

      Long before AI image generators became popular, graphic designers at major tech companies and in-house designers for large corporate clients were often instructed by managers to crib aesthetics from competitors or from social media, according to one employee at a major online shopping platform in China, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their employer.

      Where a human would need to understand and reverse engineer a distinctive style to recreate it, AI image generators simply create randomized mutations of it. Often, the results will look like obvious copies and include errors, but other graphic designers can then edit them into a final product.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ Hawaiian Airlines discloses ‘cybersecurity event’

      "Upon learning of this event, we immediately took steps to safeguard Hawaiian's operations and systems," the Form 8-K reported. "Flights are currently operating safely and as scheduled. We have engaged the relevant authorities and experts to assist in our investigation and ongoing remediation efforts."

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Ransomware Response Improves Even As Preparation Lags

      Data was encrypted in half the cases, the lowest rate in the survey’s history, while in 6% of cases organizations faced extortion demands even when data wasn’t encrypted.

    • Fortra LLC ☛ SafePay Ransomware: What You Need To Know

      Most modern ransomware gangs operate a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, where affiliates are allowed to deploy the ransomware in return for a percentage of the proceeds they manage to extort. However, SafePay does not operate like this. Instead, it appears not to offer itself to affiliates, but instead the same group develops and deploys the ransomware themselves rather than relying upon others.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ The Age of Integrity

      We need to talk about data integrity.

      Narrowly, the term refers to ensuring that data isn’t tampered with, either in transit or in storage. Manipulating account balances in bank databases, removing entries from criminal records, and murder by removing notations about allergies from medical records are all integrity attacks.

      More broadly, integrity refers to ensuring that data is correct and accurate from the point it is collected, through all the ways it is used, modified, transformed, and eventually deleted. Integrity-related incidents include malicious actions, but also inadvertent mistakes.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • TechCrunch ☛ Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos in your camera roll you haven't yet shared

      Facebook is asking users for access to their phone’s camera roll to automatically suggest AI-edited versions of their photos — including ones that haven’t been uploaded to Facebook yet.

    • The Verge ☛ Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos

      The feature suggests a new incursion into our previously private data, one that bypasses the point of friction known as conscientiously deciding to post a photo for public consumption. And according to Reddit posts found by TechCrunch, Meta’s already offering AI restyling suggestions on previously-uploaded photos, even if users hadn’t been aware of the feature: one user reported that Facebook had Studio Ghiblified her wedding photos without her knowledge.

    • Jeroen Sangers ☛ Is your AI integration slowing you down? There's a better way

      This is my vision for AI’s future: not as a separate destination we visit for help, but as an invisible assistant embedded in every tool we use, making us more capable without getting in the way.

    • Jason Becker ☛ On Age Verification and “Porn”

      And there’s absolutely no way I should have to have my real identity so easily identified with every single piece of media I interact with.

    • Free Speech Coalition ☛ State Age Verification Laws – Action Center

      State Age Verification Laws

    • Vox ☛ The hilarious implications of the Supreme Court’s new porn decision, in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton

      It’s unclear just how far Thomas, or the rest of his colleagues, would take this conclusion. Could a state, for example, require everyone who wants to look at a pornographic video to submit their names to a government agency that will publish them on a public website? At the very least, however, Free Speech Coalition suggests that lawyers challenging anti-pornography laws may no longer raise privacy arguments as part of their challenge.

    • Wired ☛ US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

      Legislators in Texas passed HB1181 in early 2023, but it was struck down in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas for potentially being unconstitutional before the law went into effect. Adult industry group the Free Speech Coalition, among others, challenged the Texas law on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment by restricting adults’ access to constitutionally protected speech. In March last year, a Fifth Circuit appeals court upheld the Texas law before the Free Speech Coalition took the case to the Supreme Court in a January hearing.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Supreme Court backs Texas law requiring ID checks for adult website access

      The Texas law, which targets websites where one-third or more of content is sexually explicit, requires users to prove they're 18 through government IDs, facial scans, or bank records. Violations carry penalties of up to $10,000 per day, jumping to $250,000 if a minor gains access. The measure has already driven major adult sites to suspend operations in Texas rather than risk fines or implement complex verification systems.

    • The Texas Tribune ☛ Supreme Court: Texas can force porn websites to verify ages

      The case stems from a 2023 law, HB 1181, that required websites to verify that a user is over the age of 18 if more than one-third of their content is considered harmful to minors. A group of adult entertainment websites sued, arguing this violated free speech and privacy protections.

    • NPR ☛ Supreme Court sides with Texas' age verification law for porn sites

      The groups noted, among other things, that while the statute does bar companies from retaining the identifying information, it does not prohibit transfer of that information or impose any other protection from disclosure to protect adults' privacy. Moreover, the challengers maintained the state's defense of the statute fell apart in light of the fact that it exempted from the law's coverage the search engines and social-media platforms that are the principal gateways for minors gaining access to sexually explicit content.

    • Techdirt ☛ The Conservatives On The Supreme Court Are So Scared Of Nudity, They’ll Throw Out The First Amendment

      The Supreme Court this morning took a chainsaw to the First Amendment on the internet, and the impact is going to be felt for decades going forward. In the FSC v. Paxton case, the Court upheld the very problematic 5th Circuit ruling that age verification online is acceptable under the First Amendment, despite multiple earlier Supreme Court rulings that said the opposite.

    • EFF ☛ How Cops Can Get Your Private Online Data

      Law enforcement demanding access to your private online data goes back to the beginning of the [Internet]. In fact, one of EFF’s first cases, Steve Jackson Games v. Secret Service, exemplified the now all-too-familiar story where unfounded claims about illegal behavior resulted in overbroad seizures of user messages. But it’s not the ’90s anymore, the [Internet] has become an integral part of everyone’s life. Everyone now relies on organizations big and small to steward our data, from huge service providers like Google, Meta, or your ISP, to hobbyists hosting a blog or Mastodon server.

    • USMC ☛ Lawmakers press VA for details on DOGE [sic] access to vets records

      DOGE [sic] employees in recent months have accessed numerous government computer systems and databases, in some cases making revisions or changes to the networks as part of their efforts to reform [sic] federal operations.

    • The Register UK ☛ Ring can use AI to 'learn the routines of your residence'

      This gives us pause, as opposed to peace of mind, and sounds like super-charged snooping wrapped in an AI bow. If this kind of information is not properly secured, it could be a treasure trove for thieves, burglars, stalkers, and all other sorts of mischief-makers. In December 2022, a grand jury indictment charged two US men with breaking into Ring accounts to make fake emergency calls to police ("swatting"), then streaming the audio and video as the police arrived.

      It's especially troubling considering Ring's past troubles with data privacy and security and its cozy relationship with law enforcement.

    • The Record ☛ Complaint says Bumble feature connected to OpenAI violates European data privacy rules

      The complaint alleges that Bumble violated GDPR due to a lack of transparency; the lack of a legal basis for transferring personal data to OpenAI; the lack of a legal basis for transferring sensitive data to OpenAI; and not telling the users who was receiving their data.

      Icebreakers relies on popups instead of soliciting direct user consent, noyb says.

  • Confidentiality

    • APNIC ☛ How Let's Encrypt reduced the impact of zombie clients

      Every night, right around midnight (mainly UTC), a horde of zombies wakes up and clamours for… digital certificates!

      The zombies in question are abandoned or misconfigured Internet servers and ACME clients that have been set to request certificates from Let’s Encrypt. As our certificates last for, at most ,90 days, these zombie clients’ software knows that their certificates are out of date and need to be replaced. What they don’t realize is that their quest for new certificates is doomed! These devices are cursed to seek certificates again and again, never receiving them.

      But they do use up a lot of certificate authority resources in the process.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Insight Hungary ☛ EU President urges Hungary to allow Pride March

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged Hungarian authorities to allow the Budapest Pride march, after the police banned the event, citing child protection law. In a video posted on X, von der Leyen called for the parade to take place “without fear of any criminal or administrative sanctions against the organisers or participants.” 

    The march, scheduled for Saturday, June 28, was blocked by police last week, citing a recently passed law by the country's right-wing government led by Viktor Orban. The new constitutional amendment is seen as part of Orban's ultra-conservative pro- “traditional values” campaign before next year's elections. 

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Taylor Swift Vienna Concert Terror Plot: Teen Charged in Germany

    A teenager in Germany has been charged with helping to plot an attack on Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour concert in Vienna. The suspect, identified as Mohammad A, was accused of interpreting bomb-building instructions and translating an Islamic State terrorist group oath of allegiance for the main suspect of the attack plot.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Republican Hundred Year War On Democracy

    Our democracy is under attack, in a war planned and carried out by generations of filthy rich tight-wingers working primarily through the Republican Party. The war has come into the open under Trump, funded by the latest group of hideously rich dirtbags, the tech bros, and justified by a cadre of anti-intellectual grifters and yakkers like Curtis Yarvin.

    We need to see the battlefield. Only then can we decide on how to act. As Marcy pointed out here, our role is explicitly political, as befits people who believe in democracy to our core.

  • Pro Publica ☛ States Fear Uncertain Future of FEMA Grants Under Trump

    Upheaval at the nation’s top disaster agency is raising anxiety among state and local emergency managers — and leaving major questions about the whereabouts of billions of federal dollars it pays out to them.

    The Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not opened applications for an enormous suite of grants, including ones that many states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. Some states pass on much of that money to their most rural, low-income counties to ensure they have an emergency manager on the payroll.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Papers Please ☛ Supreme Court upholds Texas demand for ID for Web browsing

      In its worst decision ever on demands for ID, the Supreme Court today upheld a Texas law that requires all visitors to some websites to provide the site operator with evidence of their identity and age.

      In an opinion by Justice Thomas, six Justices found that requiring ID for age verification as a condition of viewing certain websites only “incidentally” burdens the rights of adults.

      The majority reasons backward from the presumed legitimacy of ID requirements in other contexts, such as buying tobacco, that (A) weren’t at issue in this case, and (B) more importantly, don’t involve the exercise of First Amendment or any other rights:

    • Meduza ☛ What’s next, and why? How the Ukraine war’s uncertainty complicates NATO planning and shapes future Russian aggression — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Ukraine launches new long-range drone strikes at Russian military airfield, targeting tactical warplanes — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘As long as there is resistance, there is hope’: In occupied Crimea, drivers are risking arrest to cover up Russian flags on their license plates — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian government training standards for esports athletes to include 30-meter sprint, push-ups, and mouse click test — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Lynne Tracy leaves post as U.S. ambassador to Russia — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘We know that’s what finished him off’: A Russian CT scan room infected cancer patients with hepatitis. At least four died, but no one has been prosecuted. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Artists always get a carte blanche’: The anonymous curator of Meduza’s anniversary exhibition on the show’s origins, history’s echoes, and the role of art in times of crisis — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Scuffle breaks out after Armenian special forces raid church leader’s residence — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ How the Newslettification of News Reifies Trump's Power Rather than Exposing His Lies

    It’s not until the fifth paragraph of the story that we get the promised “news” about Trump rallying for the bill — and the only newsworthy part of that 73-word passage is that Trump either misstated or lied about what was in the bill.

• Environment

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Figured Out How to Extract Gold From Old Phones And Laptops

    In 2022, humans produced an estimated 62 million tonnes of electronic waste – enough to fill more than 1.5 million garbage trucks. This was up 82 percent from 2010 and is expected to rise to 82 million tonnes in 2030.

    This e-waste includes old laptops and phones, which contain precious materials such as gold. Less than one quarter of it is properly collected and recycled. But a new technique colleagues and I have developed to safely and sustainably extract gold from e-waste could help change that.

  • The Register UK ☛ US hurricane satellite data to be abruptly cut off

    The data in question comes from the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), and the termination was announced via a notice from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

  • Louie Mantia ☛ Plastic

    For how many news cycles that plastic straws garnered, there is virtually no critique of companies that produce significantly higher volumes of plastic.

  • El País ☛ Each private jet emits as much in a year as 177 cars, study finds

    The battle against climate change is also a class struggle: the ultra-rich generate far more emissions, while the poorest suffer the worst consequences. A clear example is private jets, which are increasingly used despite being the most polluting means of transport. A study by the NGO International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), published this Friday, delves into this issue: each private jet generates, on average, as many greenhouse gases (GHG) per year as 177 cars or eight heavy trucks — while transporting far fewer people or goods.

  • International Council on Clean Transportation ☛ Air and greenhouse gas pollution from private jets, 2023

    Private jets are a large and growing source of air and climate pollution. A typical private jet emits about 810 tonnes of GHGs in a typical year, equivalent to 177 passenger cars or nine Class 8 heavy-duty trucks. In 2023, private jets collectively emitted more GHGs than all flights departing from Heathrow Airport, the busiest airport in Europe. Private jet activity and emissions are overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States. In 2023, private jet flights departing from U.S. airports accounted for more than half (55%) of private jet GHG emissions globally. Florida and Texas alone generated more private jet flights and GHG emissions than the entire European Union.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Kansas EV manufacturer deploys largest fleet of electric terminal tractors in the Port of LA

      APM Terminals Pier 400 recently deployed the largest fleet of electric terminal tractors (ETTs) in the Port of L.A., marking a milestone in the terminal’s effort to decarbonize its operations and in the sector as a whole. The initial deployment includes 10 fully commissioned ETTs manufactured by Kansas City, Kansas-based Orange EV. Another 10 are expected to arrive by the end of July, replacing nearly 30% of Pier 400’s diesel terminal tractor fleet.

    • Heliomass ☛ Retro UK Train Departure Screens

      A while ago I started working on a somewhat quirky project which intersected two hobbies: Transit and retro computing. The aim was to recreate the old Network SouthEast passenger information screens using era appropriate technology.

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ Beautiful Photos of the 1961 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 ‘Bubble Top’ Coupe

      General Motors embraced futuristic design language for 1961, with Oldsmobile introducing a completely new 88 that was shorter, lower, and narrower than its predecessor while maintaining the same 123-inch wheelbase.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ NEPA: The Accepted Lies and Mistakes About This Critical Environmental Law

    • SFGate ☛ Attempts to root out 'negative' national parks history have backfired

      The Department of the Interior’s efforts to revise unfavorable stories about American history at National Park Service sites appears to be backfiring — instead of reporting incidents of “negative” history as directed by new signs, visitors have used the signs’ QR codes to submit hundreds of comments in support of the park service.

      In a 65-page leaked document provided to SFGATE by the National Parks Conservation Association, the hundreds of comments that have poured in through June 16 show overwhelming support for better funding for national parks and increased protection of public lands.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ Adam Johnson on Media in War Mode

    After the Trump administration dropped bombs on Iran last weekend, without congressional approval, the media debate wasn’t about legality, much less humanity. The Wall Street Journal offered a video series on The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “The 30,000-Pound US Bomb That Could Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Bunkers.” But it’s not just boys excited by toys; the very important Wall Street Journal is “examining military innovation and tactics emerging around the world, breaking down the tech behind the weaponry and its potential impact.”

  • FAIR ☛ ‘This Isn’t Just About Policy, It’s About What Kind of Nation We Want to Be’: CounterSpin interview with LaToya Parker on Trump budget's racial impact

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Joint Center’s LaToya Parker about the Trump budget’s racial impacts for the June 20, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • FAIR ☛ Media Did Their Best to Scare Voters Away From Zohran Mamdani

    They tried. Oh, did the media try.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Thanks to President Trump…’ Putin discusses peace talks with Kyiv and relations with Washington during press conference in Belarus — Meduza

  • FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD Foundation Welcomes New Board Member: John Baldwin

    Long-time FreeBSD community member, John Baldwin, was elected to the FreeBSD Foundation Board during the Annual Meeting on June 10, 2025. We sat down with John to learn more about his history with FreeBSD and what he’s most looking forward to accomplishing during his tenure.

  • The Register UK ☛ CISA, NSA repeat call for memory safe programming languages

    Within a few years, the tech industry began answering the call for memory-safe languages. In 2022, Microsoft executives began calling for new applications to be written in memory-safe languages like Rust. By 2023, Consumer Reports – a mainstream product review publication – published a report on memory safety and government officials like Jen Easterly, CISA's director at the time, cited the need to transition to memory-safe languages during public appearances.

  • US DOD ☛ Memory Safe Languages: Reducing Vulnerabilities in Modern Software Development

    MSLs represent a significant evolution in the approach to software security, moving beyond existing measures to proactively prevent vulnerabilities by default during development at compile time and/or during runtime. The importance of memory safety cannot be overstated: a 2019 study estimated that 66% of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) for iOS 12 and 71% of CVEs for Mojave were caused by memory safety issues. [8] The consequences of memory safety vulnerabilities can be severe, ranging from data breaches to system crashes and operational disruptions. For example, a Google Project Zero review of exploits detected in-the-wild estimates that 75% of CVEs used in those exploits were memory safety vulnerabilities. [9] Out of the 58 in-the-wild zero-days discovered in 2021, 67% were memory safety vulnerabilities. [10] As a result, the adoption of MSLs is regarded as a key strategy in improving software security and reducing the risk of costly security incidents. This aligns with CISA's Secure by Design principles, which advocate for reducing vulnerability classes by default. [11]

  • Silicon Angle ☛ OpenAI hires staff of Shopify-backed AI startup Crossing Minds

    Crossing Minds was launched in 2016 by a team that included prominent AI researcher Sebastian Thrun. He earlier co-founded online education platform Udacity Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s X product research lab. Crossing Minds’ two other co-founders, Emile Contal and Alexandre Robicquet, are also AI researchers.

  • Don Marti ☛ how Google can go legit

    Google pivoted to crime one project at a time, and as an Internet optimist sometimes I think they might be able to pivot back one project at a time. In the long run, the pivot back would be in the interest of shareholders, since there’s more money in running an ad medium that supports a publisher-brand reputation feedback loop than in a dishonest medium that people learn to avoid. Here are what should be some manageable-sized projects for those at Google who want to go legit. (Happy to come in and and pitch one of these in more detail to the new board-level committee on how to be less evil.)

  • The San Fancisco Standard ☛ Tech billionaires are obsessed with this dystopian AI sci-fi novel

    “We Are Legion” follows protagonist Bob Johansson, who has just sold his software company. After being killed by a car while crossing the street, he wakes up a century later with his mind uploaded into an artificial intelligence. The year is 2133, and the world is on the brink of economic and environmental collapse. Bob — or, rather, his digital consciousness — is the property of an anti-science Christian theocracy engaged in a global race to colonize space using AI.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Nvidia powers towards eye-popping $4-trillion market cap

    With a broadening customer base clamouring for Nvidia’s latest AI accelerators and competitors still distant, bulls are betting the chip maker’s shares have plenty of room to run.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Linux research shows open source contributing trillions to economy

    Open source is shown to contribute $9 trillion in global value, according to new research from The Linux Foundation.

    That number combined an estimate of time saved by not having to develop software covered by open source and the profits reaped by companies using open source in production, according to Frank Nagle (pictured), advising chief economist at The Linux Foundation. Now that AI is a part of the picture, the estimation process is changing.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Why does Germany pay taxes for Russian propaganda?

      Since 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the agency has been on the EU sanctions list. At the time, the EU justified this by stating that the agency's goal was to consolidate "a wider public perception of the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian." The director and deputy director, the statement added, had clearly expressed their support for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • BIA Net ☛ Cartoonist acquitted over ‘sex during pandemic’ strip after five years

    Cartoonist Zehra Ömeroğlu was acquitted after nearly five years on trial for a cartoon published in the satirical magazine Leman in 2020. The cartoon, titled “Sex during the pandemic,” had led to obscenity charges, with prosecutors seeking up to three years in prison and a judicial fine equivalent to 5,000 days.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey lifts ban on Deutsche Welle website

    RTÜK also noted that “previously flagged content has been removed.”

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK public libraries receive 140 reports on suspected ‘objectionable content’

    In response to HKFP’s enquiries, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) said on Tuesday that it had received “around 140 views” from the public since the launch of the “Collection of Views on Library Collections” mechanism in July 2023.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Google’s site reputation abuse policy: Wrong solution, real problem

    Google last year began cracking down on sites with strong search authority “abusing” their position by adding third-party commercial content such as an affiliate shopping arm or voucher code section.

    However many legitimate publishers who had built up a strong affiliate and e-commerce revenue stream got caught up in the manual penalties being handed out, from Forbes, Fortune and CNN to AP News and the Wall Street Journal and many others.

    The Association of Online Publishers has investigated the impact of the “site reputation abuse” policy and managing director Richard Reeves has written for Press Gazette outlining the findings.

  • Wired ☛ Substack Is Having a Moment—Again. But Time Is Running Out

    You might be tempted to think that the Substack revolution is shaking up the foundations of journalism, agreeing with Substack star Emily Sundberg that newsroom leaders everywhere should be barring their doors to prevent further defections. Well, not so fast. The Substack model may work very well for a few, but it’s not so easy to march in and match a salary. Readers have to pay a high price for a voice that they once enjoyed in a publication they subscribe to. And writers have to get used to the idea that the breadth of their wisdom is limited to a small percentage of patrons. Is Substack sustainable for writers addressing a general audience?

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Trump drive to defund NPR, PBS resisted by Republicans from rural states • Michigan Advance

    “The vast majority of this funding, more than 70%, actually flows to local television and radio stations,” Collins said. “In Maine this funding supports everything from emergency communications in rural areas to coverage of high school basketball championships and a locally produced high school quiz show. Nationally produced television programs such as ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ ‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,’ are also enjoyed by many throughout our country.”

  • CPJ ☛ ‘A well-orchestrated lie’: Detained Philippine journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio tells UN

    “How do we even combat a well-orchestrated lie? A story that’s so absurd that if this was a class debate, you wouldn’t even try to rebut,” Cumpio said in her letter, which Khan read on Tuesday at a U.N. Human Rights Council side event about freedom of expression in the Philippines, co-hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ The Problem Isn’t Whether The JD Vance Meme Story Is True—It’s That It’s So Believable After Everything The Trump Regime Has Done

    Much of what we’ve written about regarding the Trump regime’s nonsensical and ridiculous immigration policies have focused on how they’re grabbing people off the streets, or disappearing them to random foreign gulags without due process. But we’ve also talked about the absolute insanity of US immigration policy as it pertains to foreigners traveling to the US on visas. And the most telling thing about recent stories involving tourists being denied entry to the US? Nobody’s surprised by them anymore—even when they involve utterly ridiculous reasons like having a satirical meme on your phone.

  • NBC ☛ Video shows explosion set off in Huntington Park raid

    Armed agents crouched behind a vehicle in the driveway entered the Huntington Park home shortly after the detonation, which blew the door off and shattered a window. A drone also can be seen entering the house.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Offline music, and MP3s and/or FLACs

    Physical media and files can’t be swapped, changed, clobbered, revoked, or otherwise messed with at the whims of a streaming platform and/or their fickle licencing arrangements. This means no sudden gaps in albums or playlists, live songs replaced with studio versions, or entire albums disappearing without warning.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Nick Heer ☛ Apple Tries Again With E.U. App Distribution Policies

  This is complicated. What I would love to see are different practical examples comparing Apple’s distribution policies in most countries, its policies in the U.S. post-ruling, its previous E.U. policies, and these new ones. But there are a lot of variables here to the extent making an accurate comparison may be difficult. A more cynical person may say that is by design, and it would be hard to dispute that. But it is also the result of Apple’s specific and sometimes contradictory monetization decisions.

• Nick Heer ☛ Developers React to E.U. App Store Changes – Pixel Envy

  Assuming this meets the policies laid out by the European Commission, I am curious to see how the changes affect different developers. As I wrote yesterday, it seems like this is complicated enough to make comparisons or predictions very difficult. A developer with existing marketing channels may find the more restricted App Store search functionality a smaller issue, but may be stung by the lack of automatic updates. A smaller developer would likely benefit most from a smaller commission to Apple, but may find the App Store limitations too restrictive.

• Copyrights

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The Louvre Invited 100 Contemporary Artists to Copy—and Reinterpret—Its Masterpieces. Here's What They Made

    The instructions were vague and open-ended, but that was the point. Should they accept, the artists would have to turn their imaginary copies into real artworks that took inspiration from one of the 35,000 objects exhibited in the Louvre, ranging from antiquity to the 19th century.

  • EFF ☛ Two Courts Rule On Generative AI and Fair Use — One Gets It Right

    Things are speeding up in generative AI legal cases, with two judicial opinions just out on an issue that will shape the future of generative AI: whether training gen-AI models on copyrighted works is fair use. One gets it spot on; the other, not so much, but fortunately in a way that future courts can and should discount.

    The core question in both cases was whether using copyrighted works to train Large Language Models (LLMs) used in AI chatbots is a lawful fair use. Under the US Copyright Act, answering that question requires courts to consider: [...]

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Fears of "Overblocking" Unite Critics of U.S. Pirate Site Blocking Bill

    The draft of Rep. Darrell Issa's new U.S. pirate site blocking bill 'ACPA' is not without controversy. In public comments, opponents warn that the bill's legal framework risks overblocking, which can impact legitimate sites and services. And in a new twist, it appears the bill may come with a potential self-destruct button: a "sunsetting clause".

  • Digital Camera World ☛ AI has broken artists’ relationship with the [Internet]. Creative Commons is proposing a fix that signals how a photo can be used by machines

    Like Creative Commons licenses, CC Signals aren’t exclusive to photography but could apply to a wide variety of works placed in the Creative Commons. The proposed CC Signals so far have four different signals, which can be combined in a few different ways: [...]

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Creative Commons introduces CC Signals framework for AI data use

    The new CC Signals framework will allow creators to publish a document that specifies how AI models may and may not use their content. This document will “range in enforceability, legally binding in some cases and normative in others,” Creative Commons staffers noted in a blog post. The reason is that the extent to which creators can limit AI models’ use of their works varies by jurisdiction.